Economy & Market

Most manufacturers have started moving towards blended cements

Published

7 years ago

January 9, 2019

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Do you still see a preference for OPC in certain segments of the cement market such as institutional or in certain geographies? How do you deal with these national preferences?
While there is an improvement in the acceptance of blended cements, there are certain segments like RMCs, select infrastructure projects, where the preference continues to be for OPC due to the cost economics and the flexibility available to the contractor. We continue to work with our customers, doing trials with our blended products – PSC, CHD and PCC to get customers to move to blended cements which are more environment friendly and more durable in the long run. We also push GGBS in the RMCs to get slag presence in this segment, from where we can later evaluate the opportunity to supply a slag cement product specific to the RMCs if the cost economics work out in favor of it.

What is your company’s overall product mix – OPC, PPC and PSC? To what extent is this mix is influenced by market preferences and to what extent by availability of fly ash and/or slag?
JSW Cement is India’s leading domestic producer of green cement. The overall product mix is primarily based on Portland Slag Cement (PSC) and its variants. We also have a couple of variants of high grade blended cements – Concreel HD (CHD) and a composite cement – Comp Cem, (PCC) both of which have high one day strengths and faster setting, comparable to other competitive OPC cements available in the market. The mix is largely influenced by the market preferences and we continue to educate our customers to move towards a greener variant of blended cement which is our PSC, CHD and PCC.

Having said this, there are also some key projects where we supply OPC, which is more in projects where we want to have a presence and where we feel there is a long term opportunity with such customers.

How do you view the historical growth rates of PSC & PPC in your markets? How do you project this growth in the coming five years?
The blended market space has been expanding over the last few years with many companies trying to conserve the lifetimes of their mines and also to get into a more environmentally friendly product space. JSW Cement, the largest manufacturer of Portland Slag Cement (PSC), has chalked out an ambitious expansion plan to enhance its production capacity in the coming years. JSW currently produces green cement variants – PSC, CHD & PCC at our manufacturing facilities – Vijayanagar (Karnataka), Nandyal (Andhra Pradesh), Dolvi (Maharashtra) & Salboni (West Bengal) units to service the demand in the South, West and Eastern regions.

In the last year, our PSC has grown by more than 30 per cent, and the premium variants much higher on a year-on-year basis. We are on the process of commissioning a new greenfield 1.2 million tonnes per annum new state-of-the-art plant in Jajpur, Odisha. We expect to optimise our production there by December 2019.

We are planning to double our cement production capacity in the next few years to meet the growing demand for "Green" Cement in the eastern region by a combination of brownfield expansions at our new facility at Salboni, West Bengal and Shiva Cement, Odisha. These projects are expected to be commissioned in various phases until 2023. We are also debottlenecking our plants in South and evaluating opportunities for a GU in Tamil Nadu.

What are the applications or regions where you would recommend use of PPC/PSC to your customers and why?
PPC and PSC both are environment-friendly cements as they use industrial bye-products as an input. PPC classically uses fly ash and PSC uses slag generated in the blast furnace of steel plants.

With a better impermeability, lower heat of hydration and improved resistance to chemicals PPC and PSC cements are largely used in concreting applications. PPC offers good resistance against sulphate attack and hence, it is used in hydraulic structures, marine structures, construction near seashores, dam construction, etc. While with improved workability, higher strength and better chemical resistance PSC is a superior product and is usually lighter in color than OPC. PSC is preferred in applications where the building is exposed to high moisture, salt (chloride or sulphate) or chemicals. For example, marine structures, sewage treatment-related buildings, etc. We also offer PCC- Composite cement – which offers the best of both PPC and PSC and recommend this to our channel, influencers and associated IHBs and contractors.

We have heard a lot about peculiar customer perceptions about colour and smell of cement in some markets? Have you experienced this phenomena? Are these related to presence of slag/fly ash in cement? How do you deal with such idiosyncratic ideas?
We have come across geographies exhibiting a color preference, like for example the South – particularly Andhra Pradesh and Telangana – wanting a darker shade of cement – which they associate with better or higher strength cement. Partly this is also due to the historic availability of OPC in these markets which has attuned the customer preference to the darker shade.

A diametrically opposite view has been observed in the eastern markets where the lighter shade cement is associated with better quality and the premium cements there be it from JSW or any other brand is always a shade lighter than across the rest of the country. This also can probably be due to the availability of slag based cements in the eastern markets traditionally and it being promoted by the bigger brands there like Lafarge, ACC, etc.

Recently BIS have permitted composite cements to be manufactured and sold in India. What is your strategy for introducing this product in the market and what are the manufacturing and marketing challenges involved in this?
We welcome BIS’s decision to permit manufacturing and selling of composite cement in India. In fact, we have already introduced composite cement – which is a blend of fly ash and slag based cement- offering the best of both PSC and PPC – to our customers in Karnataka and more recently in Salboni. We also plan to make it the core product from Jhajpur, our upcoming plant in Odisha.

The feedback from the markets where we have introduced this product, has been very positive and we observe good repeat purchases at our dealer outlets. The key influencers like engineers and contractors who understand the product and its strengths also have given favourable recommendations to this product.

The supply chain of both fly ash and slag have now become an integral part of cement manufacturer. In the light of this how do you see the current demand and supply scenarios of these two commodities – Fly ash and slag? What are the price movements of these 2 commodities? Are you recommending any regulatory help in ensuring more liberal supply of fly ash?
Most cement manufacturers have started moving towards blended cements over the last few years and with this trend continuing, both fly ash and slag will become more and more important in cement manufacturing. With the capacity additions in East, we already observe an increase in slag cost there, and this has resulted in the overall cement prices moving up in the East.

The slowdown in thermal capacity addition could result in availability constraints for fly-ash in the long term, which could affect some of the manufacturers who have only PPC as their blended cement offering. The outlook is relatively better for Slag considering that most Steel manufacturers have shown an inclination to add capacity going ahead.

– BS SRINIVASALU REDDY

Economy & Market

TSR Will Define Which Cement Companies Win India’s Net-Zero Race

Published

3 days ago

April 27, 2026

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Jignesh Kundaria, Director and CEO, Fornnax Technology

India is simultaneously grappling with two crises: a mounting waste emergency and an urgent need to decarbonise its most carbon-intensive industries. The cement sector, the second-largest in the world and the backbone of the nation’s infrastructure ambitions, sits at the centre of both. It consumes enormous quantities of fossil fuel, and it has the technical capacity to consume something else entirely: the waste our cities cannot get rid of.

According to CPCB and NITI Aayog projections, India generates approximately 62.4 million tonnes of municipal solid waste annually, with that figure expected to reach 165 million tonnes by 2030. Much of this waste is energy-rich and non-recyclable. At the same time, cement kilns operate at material temperatures of approximately 1,450 degrees Celsius, with gas temperatures reaching 2,000 degrees. This high-temperature environment is ideal for co-processing, ensuring the complete thermal destruction of organic compounds without generating toxic residues. The physics are in our favour. The infrastructure is not.

Pre-processing is not the support act for co-processing. It is the main event. Get the particle size wrong, get the moisture wrong, get the calorific value wrong and your kiln thermal stability will suffer the consequences.

The Regulatory Push Is Real

The Solid Waste Management (SWM) Rules 2026 mandate that cement plants progressively replace solid fossil fuels with Refuse-Derived Fuel (RDF), starting at a 5 per cent baseline and scaling to 15 per cent within six years. NITI Aayog’s 2026 Roadmap for Cement Sector Decarbonisation targets 20 to 25 per cent Thermal Substitution Rate (TSR) by 2030. Beyond compliance, every tonne of coal replaced by RDF generates measurable carbon reductions which is monetisable under India’s emerging Carbon Credit Trading Scheme (CCTS). TSR is no longer a sustainability metric. It is a financial lever.

Yet our own field assessments across multiple Indian cement plants reveal a sobering reality: the primary barrier to scaling AFR adoption is not waste availability. It is the fragmented and under-engineered pre-processing ecosystem that sits between the waste and the kiln.

Why Indian Waste Is a Different Engineering Problem

Indian municipal solid waste is not the material that imported shredding equipment was designed for. Our waste streams frequently exceed 40 per cent to 50 per cent moisture content, particularly during monsoon cycles, saturated with abrasive inerts including sand, glass, and stone. Plants relying on imported OEM equipment face months of downtime awaiting proprietary spare parts. Machines built for segregated, low-moisture waste fail quickly and disrupt the entire pre-processing operation in Indian conditions.

The two most common failures we observe are what I call the biting teeth problem and the chewing teeth problem. Plants relying solely on a primary shredder reduce bulk waste to large fractions, but the output remains too coarse for stable kiln combustion. Others attempt to use a secondary shredder as a standalone unit without a primary stage to pre-size the feed, leading to catastrophic mechanical failure. When both stages are present but mismatched in throughput capacity, the system becomes a bottleneck. Achieving the 40 to 70 tonnes per hour required for meaningful coal displacement demands a precisely coordinated two-stage process.

Engineering a Made-in-India Answer

At Fornnax, our response to these challenges is grounded in one principle: Indian waste demands Indian engineering. Our systems are built around feedstock homogeneity, the holy grail of kiln stability. Consistent particle size and predictable calorific value are the foundation of stable kiln combustion. Without them, no TSR target is achievable at scale.

Our SR-MAX2500 Dual Shaft Primary Shredder (Hydraulic Drive) processes raw, baled, or loosely mixed MSW, C&I waste, bulky waste, and plastics, reducing them to approximately 150 mm fractions at throughputs of up to 40 tonnes per hour. The R-MAX 3300 Single Shaft Secondary Shredder (Hydraulic Drive), introduced in 2025, takes that primary output and produces RDF fractions in the 30 to 80 mm range at up to 30 tonnes per hour, specifically optimised for consistent kiln feeding. We have also introduced electric drive configurations under the SR-100 HD series, with capacities between 5 and 40 tonnes per hour, already operational at a leading Indian waste-processing facility.

Looking ahead, Fornnax is expanding its portfolio with the upcoming SR-MAX3600 Hydraulic Drive primary shredder at up to 70 tonnes per hour and the R-MAX2100 Hydraulic drive secondary shredder at up to 20 tonnes per hour, designed specifically for the large-scale throughput that higher TSR ambitions require.

The Investment Case Is Now

The 2070 Net-Zero target is not a distant goal for India’s cement sector. It starts today, with decisions being made on the plant floor.

The SWM Rules 2026 are already in effect, requiring cement plants to replace coal with RDF. Carbon credit markets are opening up, and coal prices are not going to get cheaper. Every tonne of coal a cement plant replaces with waste-derived fuel saves money on one side and generates carbon credit revenue on the other. Pre-processing infrastructure is no longer just a compliance requirement. It is a business investment with a measurable return.

The good news is that nothing is missing. The technology works. The waste is available in every Indian city. The government has provided the policy direction. The only thing standing between where the industry is today and where it needs to be is the commitment to build the right infrastructure.

The cement companies that move now will not just meet the regulations. They will be ahead of every competitor that waits.

About The Author

Jignesh Kundaria is the Director and CEO of Fornnax Technology. Over an experience spanning more than two decades in the recycling industry, he has established himself as one of India’s foremost voices on waste-to-fuel technology and alternative fuel infrastructure.

Concrete

WCA Welcomes SiloConnect as associate corporate member

Published

2 weeks ago

April 13, 2026

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The World Cement Association (WCA) has announced SiloConnect as its newest associate corporate member, expanding its network of technology providers supporting digitalisation in the cement industry. SiloConnect offers smart sensor technology that provides real-time visibility of cement inventory levels at customer silos, enabling producers to monitor stock remotely and plan deliveries more efficiently. The solution helps companies move from reactive to proactive logistics, improving delivery planning, operational efficiency and safety by reducing manual inspections. The technology is already used by major cement producers such as Holcim, Cemex and Heidelberg Materials and is deployed across more than 30 countries worldwide.

Concrete

TotalEnergies and Holcim Launch Floating Solar Plant in Belgium

Published

2 weeks ago

April 13, 2026

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TotalEnergies and Holcim have commissioned a floating solar power plant in Obourg, Belgium, built on a rehabilitated former chalk quarry that has been converted into a lake. The project has a generation capacity of 31 MW and produces around 30 GWh of renewable electricity annually, which will be used to power Holcim’s nearby industrial operations. The project is currently the largest floating solar installation in Europe dedicated entirely to industrial self-consumption. To ensure minimal impact on the surrounding landscape, more than 700 metres of horizontal directional drilling were used to connect the solar installation to the electrical substation. The project reflects ongoing collaboration between the two companies to support industrial decarbonisation through renewable energy solutions and innovative infrastructure development.